Black panthers blocking intimidating voters

“The decision shows that we can’t trust the Obama Justice Department to fairly administer our nation’s voting and election laws.” UPDATE: An earlier version of this post reported that the decision was released today.

orget about the New Black Panther Party case,” writes Abigail Thernstrom.

But the usual prerequisite for deferring or dismissing prosecution is an exhibition of contrition.

Never have I seen a case in which the government, having gone to the trouble of filing charges and litigating to the threshold of victory, decided to forfeit for the benefit of defendants who had treated both the case and the judicial process with utter contempt. Bartle Bull, a longtime Democratic activist and civil-rights lawyer — and a prominent figure in the presidential campaigns of Bobby Kennedy and Jimmy Carter — was on the scene in Philadelphia that day.

Judicial Watch had secured many previously unavailable documents through their suit against DOJ and were now suing for attorneys’ fees.

Obama’s DOJ had claimed Judicial Watch was not entitled to attorney’s fees since “none of the records produced in this litigation evidenced any political interference whatsoever in” how the DOJ handled the New Black Panther Party case.

As former Justice Department attorney Hans von Spakovsky — a longtime veteran of the Civil Divison — put it: “I have never, ever heard of the Division refusing to take a default judgment, especially in a situation where the defendants are basically admitting they violated the law.” I would go further.

“The Court’s decision is another piece of evidence showing the Obama Justice Department is run by individuals who have a problem telling the truth,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.In , a book she published last year (just after writing her condemnatory letter to the Justice Department), she made a point in the acknowledgments of thanking “J.Christian Adams,” one of the handful of people who “generously” provided “painstaking reviews” of her manuscript, and “caught errors and made valuable suggestions.” Plainly, her NRO op-ed could also have benefited from a once-over by Adams.A federal court in Washington, DC, held last week that political appointees appointed by President Obama did interfere with the Department of Justice’s prosecution of the New Black Panther Party.The ruling came as part of a motion by the conservative legal watch dog group Judicial Watch, who had sued the DOJ in federal court to enforce a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents pertaining to the the New Black Panthers case.